3 Beefs With Mitt Romney’s Convention Speech

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI

The media and other members of the American public concerned with the idea that their political representatives base what they say in fact went to town on Republican vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night. So when presidential candidate Mitt Romney took to the rostrum on Thursday on the convention’s closing evening, The Daily Beast was listening attentively.

Here, we poke holes in three of Romney’s claims.

1. Romney-Ryan Will Create 12 Million Jobs

“I’m running for president to help create a better future. A future where everyone who wants a job can find a job. Where no senior fears for the security of their retirement. An America where every parent knows that their child will get an education that leads them to a good job and a bright horizon. And unlike the president, I have a plan to create 12 million new jobs.”

This sounds like a lot. But the problem with Romney’s promise here isn’t that he’s too pie-in-the-sky. It’s that these jobs are pretty much coming to us anyway. A number of economic forecasters, including Moody’s Analytics and Macroeconomic Advisers have said that the economy will add a baseline number of about 12 million jobs between 2012 and 2016—pretty much the whole time Romney would like to put his feet up on the desk in the Oval Office. Moody’s analysts have said that this baseline is “agnostic with regard to who is elected in November.”

2. Obama Apologizes for America

“I will begin my presidency with a jobs tour. President Obama began his presidency with an apology tour. America, he said, had dictated to other nations. No, Mr. President. America has freed other nations from dictators.”

As president of the United States, Mitt Romney would never apologize for America —as the title of his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness makes clear. Prominent Republicans, however, have tried to make the case that during his time in the Oval Office, President Obama has bowed the knee to what can seem like every world leader, practically begging for American forgiveness. But in a review published by The Washington Post in February 2011, the paper ran down the supposed expressions of remorse and regret, and found that the “apology tour” was little more than an invention.

3. Obama Will Cut $716 Billion to Medicare

“His $716 billion cut to Medicare to finance Obamacare will both hurt today’s seniors and oppress innovation and jobs in medicine.”

Both Romney and Ryan have followed up this line of attack against Obama, and while it has a grain of truth to it, the statements are mostly misleading. The Obama administration has not put forward any plan that will outright gouge more than $700 billion from Medicare. However, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the health care reform law, or Obamacare, does include measures designed to decrease healthcare costs in Medicare by an estimated $716 billion over the next decade. About $415 billion of that reduction is projected to come from dwindling Medicare Part A payments—a well which is projected to run dry by 2024 anyway.